Amadeus to raise €1.4bn in flotation

TRAVEL and tourism technology firm Amadeus aims to raise up to €1.36bn (£1.20bn) when it returns to the Madrid stock exchange later this month in Europe’s largest IPO this year.

Amadeus, with €2.46bn of revenues in 2009, was delisted four years ago when BC Partners and Cinven bought their stake from airlines Air France, Lufthansa and Iberia in a deal worth €4.4bn.

Now Amadeus will offer 98.9m shares in a primary offering and 36.9m existing shares to institutional investors, representing 25 per cent of the firm, it said in its IPO prospectus lodged with stock market regulator CNMV.

It aims for a free float of about 30 per cent.

The price range for the fresh listing has been set between €9.2 and €12.2 per share, giving the company an enterprise value of between €7.3bn and €8.4bn, nearly double that of the 2005 private-equity buy-out.

“Interest in this listing is very high, but the range is massive and wider than expected,” a trader in Spain said.

Air France with 23.1 per cent and Lufthansa with 11.6 per cent will offload parts of their stakes, while cash-rich Iberia, which last week sealed a merger deal with British Airways, will maintain its 11.6 per cent.

It recently decided to push ahead with the April IPO despite a raft of failed listings across Europe, including airline ticketing rival Travelport which called off a $1.8bn (£1.2bn) London float in February.